Both RICS rule sets ship as templates. Take off on a dimension sheet, build rates you can defend at a valuation, and keep London and Manchester apart in one rate library — offline, on your own machine, for one payment.
No sign-up for the free tier. No sales call, no procurement cycle, and no renewal date.
If you are a sole practitioner, a two-partner practice, or a contractor's estimator, the established measurement packages are priced for a consultancy with a procurement department. Their strength is drawing- and model-led measurement at volume. If that is your work, buy one — we say so on the comparison page.
BillMate is for the rest of it: turning a measure you already have into a properly structured cost plan or measured bill, to the RICS rules, without an annual per-seat renewal. NRM1 and NRM2 both ship as section templates, and the one you select also instructs the AI assistant in that rule set's conventions.
The stage where you need a defensible number and the drawings are nowhere near detailed enough to measure. Group elements, £/m² against GIFA, and the additions kept visible rather than smeared into the rates.
| Gp | Group element | Cost | £/m² | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Facilitating works | — | — | — |
| 1 | Substructure | £312,000 | £168.65 | 10.4 |
| 2 | Superstructure | £1,184,000 | £640.00 | 39.7 |
| 3 | Internal finishes | £268,000 | £144.86 | 9.0 |
| 4 | Fittings, furnishings & equipment | £74,000 | £40.00 | 2.5 |
| 5 | Services | £962,000 | £520.00 | 32.2 |
| 6 | Prefabricated buildings | — | — | — |
| 8 | External works | £186,000 | £100.54 | 6.2 |
| Building works estimate | £2,986,000 | £1,614.05 | 100.0 | |
| Main contractor's preliminaries 12% | £358,320 | £193.69 | — | |
| Main contractor's overheads and profit 6% | £200,659.20 | £108.46 | — | |
| Project and design team fees 12% | £425,397.50 | £229.94 | — | |
| Risk allowances 8% | £317,630.14 | £171.69 | — | |
| Cost limit, excluding inflation | £4,288,006.84 | £2,317.84 | — | |
Illustrative figures for a speculative office in Greater Manchester, 25 August 2026 — an illustration of the method, not a benchmark. Every addition compounds on the running total in NRM1's order, and each is calculated rather than typed, so changing the preliminaries percentage moves everything below it. BillMate holds no BCIS or other published cost data: the £/m² has to be yours. You would round the cost limit for presentation, of course — the pence are shown here only to make the point that the figure is calculated rather than typed.
Constituent by constituent, with the waste in the quantity and the additions applied where a checker can see them.
| Constituent | Quantity | Unit | Cost | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Material Ready-mixed concrete C32/40, delivered — including 3% waste | 1.03 | m³ | £132 | £135.96 |
| Material Part-load surcharge and waiting-time allowance | 1.00 | item | £6.50 | £6.50 |
| Material Curing and protection allowance | 1.00 | item | £2.20 | £2.20 |
| Labour Gang — ganger and two labourers, place and compact | 0.75 | hr | £96 | £72 |
| Plant Poker vibrator — hire and fuel | 0.35 | hr | £4.80 | £1.68 |
| Net cost | £218.34 | |||
| Overheads and establishment charges, 10% | £21.83 | |||
| Profit and risk, 15% on net cost plus overheads | £36.03 | |||
| Unit rate per m³ | £276.20 | |||
Illustrative constituent costs, Greater Manchester, 25 August 2026 — re-price every line against your own supply chain. One thing to watch under NRM2: BillMate's default 10% overheads and 15% profit are set for markets where those are carried in the rates. If you are pricing preliminaries and OH&P separately, as an NRM2 bill normally does, set both to zero here or you will recover them twice.
Note what is not in this build-up: no cement, no aggregate, no mixer. Concrete arrives ready-mixed and the risk moves from batching to part-loads and waiting time, so those get their own lines. The same item in a market where it is batched on site is a structurally different rate — here is that version. A rate library that cannot tell those apart is not a rate library.
Timesing for repeats, deductions for openings, squaring calculated. Six months later a query is answered by opening the sheet rather than re-measuring.
| Times | Dimensions | Squaring | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2/ | 9.60 5.40 |
103.68 | Front and rear elevations, dpc to eaves. Timesing 2/ — both are identical. |
| 2/ | 6.20 5.40 |
66.96 | Gable ends, ditto. |
| 6/ | 1.20 1.35 |
9.72 | Deduct six window openings, 1200 × 1350. |
| 2.10 2.10 |
4.41 | Deduct the patio door opening. | |
| 0.90 2.10 |
1.89 | Deduct the front door opening. | |
| Cast into the bill | 154.62 | m² | |
Whether a small opening is deducted at all is a question for NRM2 and for the preambles on your bill — not for the software. BillMate does the arithmetic you ask for; it does not decide the rule. The full walkthrough, including measuring on screen from an image of the drawing.
Continuous with everything above it: item 2.03 carries the rate the build-up arrived at, and 2.06 carries the quantity the dimension sheet cast.
| Item | Description | Unit | Qty | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.01 | Excavating to reduce levels, maximum depth not exceeding 2.00 m | m³ | 386.00 | £14.80 | £5,712.80 |
| 2.02 | Disposal of excavated material off site, including all charges | m³ | 386.00 | £22.40 | £8,646.40 |
| 2.03 | In-situ reinforced concrete C32/40 in ground beams; poured against faces of excavation | m³ | 74.00 | £276.20 | £20,438.80 |
| 2.04 | Sawn formwork to sides of ground beams, height not exceeding 500 mm | m² | 168.00 | £47.10 | £7,912.80 |
| 2.05 | High-yield reinforcement bars, cut, bent and fixed, including tying wire and spacers | t | 5.80 | £1,485 | £8,613 |
| 2.06 | Facing brickwork in outer skin of cavity wall, PC £680/1000, in gauged mortar; flush pointed | m² | 154.62 | £92.40 | £14,286.89 |
| Carried to collection | £65,610.69 | ||||
Illustrative project and rates. Note what is not in these rates: preliminaries and main contractor's overheads and profit, which an NRM2 bill prices separately — the same point the build-up above warns about. One rate is an AI draft and is marked; the exported document counts it. The same page for three markets.
UK quantity surveyors have applied regional location factors for decades. The adjustment is only as good as the base rate it adjusts, and a library that has forgotten where its rates came from cannot be adjusted at all.
| Description | Unit | Rate | Location | Priced | Source | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Facing brickwork in outer skin of cavity wall, PC £680/1000 | m² | £92.40 | Manchester | 2026-06 | Priced tender | Current |
| In-situ reinforced concrete C32/40 in ground beams | m³ | £276.20 | Manchester | 2026-06 | Own build-up | Current |
| Ditto, same specification | m³ | £341.75 | London EC2 | 2026-05 | Priced tender | Current |
| Sawn formwork to sides of ground beams | m² | £47.10 | Leeds | 2026-03 | Subcontract quote | Current |
| High-yield reinforcement, 16 mm, cut, bent and fixed | t | £1,485 | Manchester | 2024-09 | Priced tender | Stale |
Two entries here are the same specification priced in different cities, and they sit side by side rather than averaging into a number that is true nowhere. One is flagged stale at 12 months. Illustrative rates, not market evidence — how the library works.
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Every market above has a page of its own, and two of them say plainly that no national method of measurement ships for them — see what "localised" means here.
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